A great WordPress.com site about how much you suck

Aqua Arcade is Drowning in Bullshit

Few things could be less surprising than the fact that Aqua Arcade is about to fail. But predictable or not, I think it’s worth talking about. And by talking about, I mean talking shit about.

Aqua Arcade does all of the right things in the completely wrong ways. Sure, the video is a quick two minutes and twenty-five seconds, but the first full minute of that is text. Hey guys, you have a whole fucking page for text; I’m watching your video because I don’t feel like reading. And why the hell is no one speaking these words – does your $2,500 goal cover a fucking microphone to record some god damned voiceover? All I hear the whole time is this boring ass music. If I watching an advertisement for a spa or making a Mii, then this music would be perfectly acceptable. But you’re supposed to be getting me excited about an upcoming video game.. even if it is for the fucking iPhone.

And when they do finally get to the gameplay, it is the most dull thing I have ever had the displeasure to witness. Fine, your game isn’t action-packed, but then at least show a couple of clips of different levels – oh, dear lord, please tell me you have other levels in this game, or are at least planning to have some. This is just 30 seconds of some circles floating around some other shapes. Very slowly, I might add. Anyway, let’s just get to this wall of text.

“We’ve spent the last few months working on a game concept that we’d like to present to you now, it’s called Water Games.”

I thought it was called Aqua Arcade. Jesus tap-dancing Christ, get your own name straight.

“As of June, our first iOS Game has been released titled Bankrupt the Bank!”

And I suppose that’s just what you’ve done with your company, and that’s why after that release, you need $2,500 just to make a shitty iOS game. Can’t wait until we get to the part where you try to justify that budget.

“The idea is simple, do you remember those handheld games that were popular from the 60s up until around the mid 90s that would use air to propel balls, basketballs or rings through water and caught? It is ok if you don’t, we do and miss those games very much so.”

No, really, it’s fine if you have no idea what the hell this whole project is based on, don’t worry your pretty little head about it. The people developing this game are nostalgic for it, and that really ought to be enough for you, you selfish assholes.

“First we had to come up with a way to simulated the effect of water and gravity. With the usage of accelerometers, we have been able to recreate the affects of the original handheld game and make it even better at the same time. You will be able to play utilizing both the accelerometers and just applied gravity.”

Holy shit, you guys were able to simulate water and gravity?! What the hell are you doing on Kickstarter – did you already spend all of your NASA grant money? Or did they take it away because you can’t form simple fucking sentences? “We do and miss those games very much so”? “A way to simulated the effect”? “both the accelerometers and just applied gravity”? This reads like the person writing it was given a stack of notecards with some words and phrases, and, having no idea what they meant, had to put together this Kickstarter page using them.

“Next and finally, we have been throwing around the idea of making different themes and game modes, but we did not want to create a app that relied on in-apppurchases for various reasons.”

I hope at least one of those reasons is the fact that you want everyone to purchase the game on Kickstarter before you even finish it. But I’m more inclined to believe that you didn’t want to rely on them because you know damn well that no one would buy them.

“So, why Kickstarter?”

Here it is! The budget breakdown explaining why you can’t make this game without taking $2,500 from your backers!

“…we would like to purchase a new MacBook or iMac to speed up development…”

Well, to be fair, a new Macbook is pretty much your entire budget. It’s really a shame that you haven’t purchased a computer since 2002, otherwise, it would be able to handle a simple 2D game, even with features as advanced as gravity.

“Our minimum budget allows us to complete the game.”

Hmm, you don’t say. Your budget of $2,500 is the bare minimum to complete this game, eh? So, without that new Macbook, it would be impossible for you to finish development? But how rude of me, I never finished your video. What’s after your 30 seconds of dull gameplay?

“available exclusively on iOS”

Yeah, let’s not go pretending like that’s a good thing. Aqua Arcade isn’t going to be a selling point for iPhones, so exclusivity only means you’re too lazy or incompetent to get it out elsewhere.

“fall 2013″

Wait just one damn m- ..fall 2013? Water Games? This isn’t your first Kickstarter, is it?

Before it became Aqua Arcade, Water Games had a “minimum budget” (THOSE ARE SARCASTIC QUOTES) of $10,000 back in August. Somehow, over the course of a few months, the developers managed to save $7,500. I would imagine that at this rate, they could just hold out for a few more weeks, and they could create their game for free.

And let’s not overlook the laziness here. The video is almost identical, even mentioning a past date for the release – but hey, at least they changed the title of the game there! But even most of the text is a copy-and-paste job, still calling it Water Games. They didn’t even bother to have it proofread the second time around; it still reads like a kid in middle school wrote it trying to sound smart by shoving vocabulary words into a report. The original campaign only made it to $46 in pledges, so how in the shit could they have possibly thought that putting up a nearly-identical page for $2,500 was going to be a winner?

Game developers for iOS think that all they have to do is come up with a physics gimmick and put some cute art on it, and they have a hit. Sometimes, they’re right. The rest of the time, they’re Grove Media Studios, and they’re horribly wrong.

And then, the whimper of a dying Kickstarter.

Guys, you seem to have accomplished next to nothing in the past few months since your last Kickstarter. If you have the physics in place, some drawings and level design are really all you need. You should have just been able to finish the game on your ancient Macbooks and released it by now. You know damn well that all $2,500 was going to do was get a new computer that you would get all excited about for a few days, and then you’d be back to realizing that your development bottleneck wasn’t the processing speed of your computer. It’s obviously your competence or ambition. Just get your fucking game done, and release it into the obscurity of the App Store like everyone else.